In an article on the recent decision in New York to pay students for making good grades, Glenn Beck argues this is a bad idea. To be honest, I once thought this was a bad idea, but I have changed my mind about it, at least when it comes to payment for good grades (I still agree with myself on paying for tutoring). Beck's main argument is that we shouldn't be paying students because free education is a gift. If only things were that simple. I happen to think education is a gift -- but only when it is free to take it or leave it. We thus shouldn't be paying college students to make good grades, for example. But with pre-college public education, people are forced by law to be there. For people like me, this isn't an issue, because I loved learning. However, I know plenty of people who think of the gift of education as a gift of a rattlesnake. Worse, there is someone there with a shotgun telling you that if you don't take the rattlesnake, they will shoot you in the head. An extreme analogy, perhaps, but I think it makes the point. For such students, some sort of incentive is absolutely necessary. Money works. More, contra Beck's belief, it will in fact teach students to appreciate capitalism more, as they will learn about earning money -- something too many young people know nothing about. Thus, it really is analogous to giving your children an allowance -- something I will certainly be doing with my child. All in all, Stu is right, and Beck is wrong on this.
In the end, society is better off with an educated populace. If this will do it, let's do it. If it applies to everyone, there's not a problem. You would be surprised at how rapidly sutdent IQ's will rise when they have incentives to learn. Also, it would be a nice way to get back a little tax money.
4 comments:
I love learning too, but I didn't get much of it done in government schools.
Unfortunatley grades are often awarded based on the whims of the instructors. If you write a pro-gun essay for a civics class your not going to get better than a C no matter how good a writer you are.
Money wouldn't have motivated me as a student. It motivates me now because if I don't earn it I'll starve to death and lose my house, but that wasn't the case in school.
I think the dog said it best - if you don't go to school, you'll go to jail, and you'll have to go to school in jail.
In your article,"more capitalism in our schools". My question is, how can any-one rationally teach capitolism in a completely socialistic system?
All government-tax funded school systems are socialistic by their very nature and do not educate, but indoctrinate.
On my blog site, "octogenariansblog.com" I have written many articles about this subject.
You cannot expect any improvenment in the tax-supported system. The system itself is immoral and corrupt, based upon a system of thievery.
Thanks
Anne Cleveland
Here's what I do with incentives: I do not pay my child to learn because that is expected. I don't pay for good grades because that is expected. But I do pay bonuses on special occasions. E.g., even though I am not a huge fan of the Taks test, I offered my child a bonus for each commended score and a special bonus for a perfect score in math. That motivation worked. I do not normally ask for perfection, so an extra effort was accompanied by a bonus.
Well, one doesn't do anything rationally in a socialist system -- first lesson from Hayek. Having an incentive structure, though, can teach that lesson inadvertently. It teaches you that hard work is what earns you money. I would thus add an addendum and argue that harder classes should in fact pay more than easy classes. And then we should make the classes harder.
I was also expected to make good grades, but I didn't. In my case, boredom, mostly. Would financial incentives, so I could buy something at the mall on the weekends (it would have been books in my case, increasing the danger of boredom in schools), have encouraged me to make good grades? Perhaps. I would have probably bothered to do my homework.
I see this like paying an allowance for house work to your children. I will expect my children to help around the house, but I will also pay them an allowance for it. That way they learn that hard work pays, you don't get things for free, and that they need to manage their money if they want things.
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